1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to instant tickets used by lotteries and promotions, more particularly, to a method and an apparatus for preventing fraud with instant tickets.
2. The Prior Art
Instant game tickets are popular forms of gambling and entertainment, usually employed by state and national lotteries and by companies doing marketing promotions. There are two basic physical forms for instant game tickets, the pull-tab ticket and the scratch ticket. The pull-tab ticket is typically a sheet of plastic or heavy paper onto which are printed a number of symbols. A second sheet of plastic or paper is bonded over the first sheet so that the symbols are hidden. The second sheet includes perforations that define a hatch over each symbol. The player tears open a hatch to reveal a symbol. The typical scratch ticket is composed of a sheet of plastic or heavy paper on which is printed a number of symbols. The symbols are covered by an opaque, removable coating that can be scratched off to reveal the symbols underneath.
There are two basic categories of instant game tickets based on when and how the winner is determined, the predetermined ticket and the probability ticket. Whether or not a predetermined ticket will be a winner is determined when the ticket is manufactured. For example, a winning number is printed on the ticket and the player reveals all of the playing numbers to see if any of them match the winning number. The player has no choices to make.
In the probability ticket, every ticket has the potential to be a winner. For example, a ticket has five poker hands, one of which is to be chosen and revealed by the player. If chosen poker hand is the highest one on the ticket, the ticket is a winner. If more than one hand is revealed, the ticket is voided. Since there is always a highest poker hand on every ticket, every ticket can win if the player chooses the correct hand. In another example, the player chooses five playing cards from a set of 25 playing cards and if the five chosen cards combine to form one of a predetermined set of poker hands, the ticket is a winner. If at least one combination of the 25 playing cards includes at least one of the predetermined set, every ticket can win if the player chooses the correct five cards.
Because every probability ticket can win, it is a target for fraud. A player will clandestinely determine which selection will be the winner and then reveal only that selection. One popular technique for determining the winning selection is to put a number of pinprick holes that are not visible to casual inspection in a selection cover and then to examine the pinpricked selection through a microscope.
Currently, fraud is minimized by inspecting the ticket after it has been sold and brought back as a winner. One example is an instrument that visually inspects the ticket for microscopic holes. One shortcoming of post-selection inspection is that, as new fraud techniques are created, new detection instruments must be designed and distributed to the many thousands of instant ticket outlets. And this is assuming that the fraud technique is detected by those paying out the winning tickets. So there is not only the expense of designing and distributing new detection instruments, there is the time lag in detecting the fraud technique and the time lag in designing and distributing detection instrument, both of which may be significant.